A Cabrara’s Slender-legged Treefrog (Osteocephalu cabrerai) from Peru a couple of years ago. These are large treefrogs that often have these rough areas that can make them about invisible in the chaotic backdrop of the Amazon.
This Red Eyed Treefrog from Guatemala looks a bit different than those I’ve seen in Costa Rica and Mexico.
Ok, weirdo.
This is a Pipa pipa (Surinam Toad) I photographed in Peru a couple of weeks ago – there were a lot of them! They’re entirely aquatic, and have a crazy reproductive process. After mating and eggs are ready, the male squishes them into swollen tissue on the back of the female (those white dots in their little back sacks. The eggs sink into the skin, and ride around with her for a few months. When they are ready to hatch, full little frogs (not tadpoles) emerge right from their mother’s back. What is more interesting to me is that at some point in the eggs-n-back part, the embryos are surrounded by highly vascular tissue, suggesting that nutrients and oxygen are transferred from the mother.
Greven, H., & Richter, S. (2009). Morphology of skin incubation in Pipa carvalhoi (Anura: Pipidae). Journal of Morphology, 270(11), 1311–1319. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmor.10749
These three-striped rocket Frogs are small ground-living animals that are relatively common near streams, wandering through the rainforest floor. They can quickly disappear into leaf litter when spotted. We saw this one in Peru a couple of years ago.
One of the many large treefrogs one can find in the understory of the Peruvian Amazon on a night hike.
One of the Red-Eyed Treefrogs that called at night from the bushes above a small pond in Costa Rica last year.
